- There is much talk in #414 about "neighbors in Kuhndu sleeping at each other's houses." Does this relate to things that are happening in the world in which George Bush instead of Jed Bartlet is President?
- We had never heard of this but people at the Television Without Pity West Wing Forum (TWoP) came up with links about situations that appear related although these reports come from civil wars which aren't all that similar to the Rwanda genocide upon which the rest of the Kuhndu situation seems to be based. Here are some of the related items.
- Sierra Leone - posted by Maureen Collins on TWoP:
Amnesty International - "The terror wreaked by rebel forces on civilians has also included men being forced to rape members of their own family under threat of being mutilated by having their hands or arms cut off."
- Sierra Leone - link posted by "ForeverWild" on TWoP:
Speech delivered by the Vice President Berewa at the conference on "the Rule of Law and the Legacy of Conflict" at Gabarone, Botswana from 16th -19th January 2003 - "They witnessed sons forced at gun point to rape their own mothers, and saw the seventy year old mother forced to breast feed the head of her thirty five year old son who had just been decapitated."
- Sierra Leone - link posted by "GraydonCarter" on TWoP:
Human Rights Watch - Sexual Violence Against Women And Girls During The
Civil War - "The rebels have forced civilians to commit incest, one of the biggest taboos in any society. One survivor witnessed the RUF trying to force a brother to rape his sister in Sambanya village in Koinadugu district. When the brother refused to do so, the rebels shot him. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters. Fathers were forced to dance naked in front of their daughters and vice versa."
- Bosnia - Deborah posted this link on TWoP:
"Mass Rape in Bosnia
Breaking the Wall of Silence" an interview with Seada Vranic" - "Seada has collected the statements of young children who watched from hiding as chetniks raped their mothers and sisters, or forced men to rape their own family members"
- Bosnia-Herzogovina - link posted by "ForeverWild" on TWoP:
Torturers are not born they are nurtured, trained and supported by Jan Breckenridge - "Many of the rapes have been committed in ways to inflict maximum humiliation on the victims, on their families and on the whole community.... Another form is third party rape, where a male prisoner is forced under threat to rape another prisoner, sometimes a member of his own family."
- Balkans - link posted by "ForeverWild" on TWoP:
Croatian novelist and journalist Slavenka Drakulic tells a story of breathtaking brutality - ...guards are forcing Muslim fathers to rape their own
sons or be shot -- comes from interviews with women who were victims of acts of breathtaking cruelty and racial hatred."
- Bosnia-Herzegovina - link posted by Brian Jackson on TWoP:
In February 1993, Equality Now sent Feryal Gharahi, a Muslim lawyer and a board member of Equality Now, to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Here are
some of her findings: - " I heard stories of men being raped, of forced incest - fathers forced to rape daughters, brothers forced to rape sisters. There is a deliberate and systematic campaign being carried out by Serbian forces to destroy the sexuality, the family structure, the lives and the spirit of non-Serbian, and particularly Moslem people who live in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
- Haiti - link posted by "ForeverWild" on TWoP:
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - Organization of American States
"Often, a violation occurred in the home of the victim, in front of the children and other family members, and thus not only the woman, but the entire family was terrorized. In many cases, the woman was forced to witness the rape or murder of her daughter or other family member before being herself raped. In one case of which the IACHR was informed, a 15 year-old was forced to rape his own mother. "
- Nanking, China (December 1937) - - link posted by "ForeverWild" on TWoP:
Iris Chang lectures on rape of Nanking during World War II - "In front of other members of the family, sons were forced to rape their own mothers. Fathers were forced to rape their own daughters. Brothers were forced to rape their own sisters. If they refused, they were often killed on the spot."
- Rwanda - link posted by Brian Jackson on TWoP:
Toward an Anthropology of Genocide by Alexander Laban Hinton - discussing "The Cultural Face of Terror in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994," by Christopher Taylor, there is this: "compelled them to engage in asocial acts signifying misdirected flow (rape and forced incest)."
- Rwanda - link posted by Brian Jackson on TWoP:
Post-genocide Situation in Rwnda (February 18-28, 2001): Gender-based Violence During the Genocide - "Avega's findings of types of genocidal sexual violence reinforce earlier findings of human rights investigators, atrocities included sexual slavery, gang rape, forced incest, purposeful HIV transmission...."
- These last two links surprised us. We had assumed that during the Rwanda genocide, Hutu militias just murdered every Tutsis they came across (probably slowing down for some rape as well, with the victim of the rapes also being murdered thereafter). They also, of course, murdered Hutus who opposed the genocide. But there are reports that a "quarter- to a half-million women and girls of all ages survived rape." So other people might have also survived horror that didn't end in death and if that is true then forced incest might have been used.
- More information on the Genocide in Rwanda: From The Atlantic Bystanders to Genocide - Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen by Samantha Power
- Background: "In the course of a hundred days in 1994 the Hutu government of Rwanda and its extremist allies very nearly succeeded in exterminating the country's Tutsi minority. Using firearms, machetes, and a variety of garden implements, Hutu militiamen, soldiers, and ordinary citizens murdered some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century."
- What the Clinton Administration did: "As the terror in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the
death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands.... In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of
the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act.
- Josh and Joe go around a bit on what constitutes "terrorism" in "Evidence of things Not Seen" so we looked around and came up with the following:
- The Council on Foreign Relations says: The State Department defines terrorism as"premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."
But
World Conflict Quarterly says three government agencies define it these ways:
US Dept of Defense: The calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.
State Department: International terrorism is terrorism conducted with the support of a foreign government or organization and / or directed against foreign nationals, institutions or governments.
FBI: Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives
- Definition of Terrorism
[Source: Patterns of Global Terrorism. Washington: Dept. of State, 2001: vi]
"No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance. For the purposes of this report,
however, we have chosen the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States
Code, Section 2656f(d). That statute contains the following definitions:
"The term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against
noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to
influence an audience.
"The term 'international terrorism' means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more
than one country.
"The term 'terrorist group' means any group practicing, or that has significant subgroups that
practice, international terrorism.
"The U.S. Government has employed this definition of terrorism for statistical and analytical
purposes since 1983.
"Domestic terrorism is probably a more widespread phenomenon than international terrorism.
Because international terrorism has a direct impact on U.S. interests, it is the primary focus of
this report. However, the report also describes, but does not provide statistics on, significant
developments in domestic terrorism.
------- from: Naval Historical Center
- "Today, there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. Countries define the term according to their own beliefs and to support their own national interests. International bodies, when they craft a definition, do so in the interests of their member states. Academics striving to define terrorism are also subject to their own political
points of view.
"European countries and the United States tend to define terrorism narrowly, making
sure that it only applies to acts of non-governmental organizations. For example, Title
22 of the U.S. Code defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence"
against "noncombatant targets by subnational groups" usually with the goal to
influence an audience.
"The U.S. Department of Defense uses a definition that highlights another element of
the Western concept of terrorism. Terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the
threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or
societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."
In other words, terrorism is violence designed to advance some cause by getting a
government to change its policies or political behavior.
"Contrast these definitions with one produced by Iranian religious scholar, Ayatulla
Taskhiri in a paper delivered at a 1987 international terrorism conference called by the
Organization of the Islamic Conference. After a review of Islamic sources concerning
terrorism, Taskhiri defined it as follows: "Terrorism is an act carried out to achieve an
inhuman and corrupt objective and involving threat to security of any kind, and in
violation of the rights acknowledged by religion and mankind."
"This is a much broader definition of terrorism. Under this definition, nation states
themselves could be guilty of terrorism. Any inhuman or corrupt objective coupled
with an act that threatens security and rights regardless of the motivation could be
considered terrorism. Later in his paper, Taskhiri accuses the United States of being the
"mother of international terrorism" by oppressing peoples, strengthening dictatorships,
and supporting the occupation of territories and savage attacks on civilian areas....
"Consider some additional definitions of terrorism.
- "All criminal acts directed against a State intended or calculated to create a state
of terror in the minds of particular persons or persons in the general public."
(League of Nations, 1937)
- "Act of terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime." (Alex P. Schmid of
United Nations Office for the Prevention of International Terrorism. He is the
author of many books on terrorism, including Terrorism and the Media, 1992.)
- "Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and
threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a
political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience." (James M.
Poland, professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento.
He has written extensively on terrorism and hostage crisis intervention.)
-------- from
Constitutional Rights Foundation
|
Fourth Season: Genocide & Terrorism
Home
